Friday, February 28, 2014

The past 2 winters - without a racecar - have been much different.
From 2009-2012 I was eagerly awaiting new classing rulesets to decide
where to position the #929Evo, what mods to do or undo, what items to
refresh and what would need done by my title sponsor (ECU Tuning, etc).
I would pull together all that information and eventually build my
schedule. The biggest pain of that process was scheduling the
tuning/maintenance time with my title sponsors - AMS Performance or Buschur Racing.
The sponsors were great help - no issues there - but with them being
between 3.5 hrs and 8 hrs away over the years, it provided schedule
concerns, time off from work, issues with the weather, etc. Some pics from years past:

The past 2 winters - without a racecar - have been much different! No scheduling of long-distance trips, no pre-prep on the car, no figuring out mods, no ordering mods (UPS/Fedex guy probably misses me!), no time spent freezing in the garage during these cold months, etc.
So not owning a racecar isn't all bad news. But I was extremely meticulous with my maintenance schedule and always strived to keep my racecar legal and in full advantage of the rules.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

It was a very different 2013 for me. After selling the #929Evo last fall, I had a complete of renting. I drove a Miata, a Volvo (twice), 2 Mustangs, 3 different BMW SpecE30's and a Subaru STI rally car. I set a track record, took 1st in a Sprint race, took 1st in an Endurance and tried some Rallying!

We started at Gateway with a NASA sprint weekend in a PTE Miata. First place and a track record.

Next up was the 1st of two 24 Hours of Lemons events. With 65+ other cars, we turned some crazy 3-hr stints into 420+ laps over 15hrs and a solid yet disappointing 2nd place overall.

Another NASA Sprint race weekend - in a Mustang that never ran correctly
followed next and definitely one of the most frustrating weekends in my
race career.

A planned gap over the long hot summer months came next. Lots of work setting up a July/August event but it all fell through.

Finally, 2 weeks before a 4.5hr Enduro at Autobahn I had lines on 3
different rides. 1 fell through, 1 was out of my pricerange and the one
I went with netted me my first ever Enduro win! In a Mustang no
less...

A quick 1/2 day excursion to DirtFish outside Seattle during a weekend getaway yielded some good video and showed me the gravel stuff is crazily different than the tarmac stuff!

I had a November Chumpcar race lined up at a brand new track, but it fell through as well. I scrambled and picked up an early December Enduro + Sprint weekend with NASA and it was pretty awesome.

Overall, I seemed to gravitate towards Enduros. If nothing else, it helped maximize my seattime and get the most out of an event or weekend. There were some good arrive-and-drive options, some good friends with good cars and some not so great events.